The advent of digitally encoded music has led to a variety of applications directed to music composition, storage and playback, including digital authoring or composing platforms and a variety of music and other media players. Some tools have been commercially developed which permit a musician or other artist to compose a multimedia work, such as a music album which includes video clips to accompany the music tracks. Other tools have been developed which permit a user to mix audio sources to create and store new musical material, or remixed or recombined versions of existing material.
However, while the amount and type of media content has continued to grow richer, the corresponding tools used to compose or consume that media have not necessarily kept pace. Playback applications generally assume a passive role for the listener or other consumer of the content, when that individual might actually wish to improvise, compose, mix or adapt the original content for their own purposes to enhance their media experience. Thus for example a music consumer might wish to generate a digitally encoded playlist of songs whose musical content may be dynamically responsive to environmental inputs, for example a set of songs whose tempo may increase as the number of people at a party or other function increases.
Music consumers and others may likewise desire to synchronize lighting and other environmental effects with the musical or other content being played. In addition, a composer or user of enhanced media products may wish to easily view or link to other media stores or information, for instance to navigate to a Web site storing biographical information on a musician or other artist. Other media and environmental integration may be desirable, with dynamic feedback between that music or other media and the environment in which it is played or delivered. Other problems and shortcomings in media composition and playback exist.